Suspects’ release on bail emboldens corrupt officeholders

PESHAWAR: The release of key suspects on interim bail from the Peshawar High Court (PHC) due to certain flaws in the Ehtesab Commission Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Act 2014 has frustrated the Ehtesab Commission and emboldened those accused of corruption.
Some key suspects, including former excise and taxation minister Liaqat Shabab, chief coordinating officer of Kohat district council Noor Daraz Khattak who is father of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf Member Provincial Assembly Gul Sahib Khattak, the chancellor of Iqra National University Obaidur Rehman, Additional Secretary Finance Imtiaz Ayub and others have secured bail apparently due to loopholes in the Ehtesab Commission Act.
First, a division bench headed by PHC Chief Justice Mazhar Alam Miankhel issued an interim bail to the arrested key suspects after lawyers for the accused raised a legal point. They said the Ehtesab Act had given no legal cover to judicial custody and thus their custody in prison was illegal.
After the grant of an interim bail by the PHC chief justice, other benches of the high court also started issuing interim bails to the arrested suspects in light of the order passed by him.The high court in its order stated that the prosecutors had not explained legal cover to the judicial custody in the Act. However, in some cases the prosecutors produced the Lahore High Court judgment. They stated that as per that decision, legal cover for judicial custody of the suspects could automatically be extended in a special law.
Noor Alam Khan, who deals with criminal cases in superior courts, told The News that one major flaw in the Ehtesab Commission Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Act 2014 was the lack of any provision for remanding a suspect into judicial custody.
He said the framers of the law had included Section 38 in the Act, which provides mechanism for remanding a suspect into the custody of the commission, but no provision was included in the Act for sending a suspect to judicial lock-up/prison after completion of his physical remand.
The lawyer pointed out that if there was no legal cover for judicial remand in the Act, then keeping a suspect in prison by the Ehtesab Court is an illegal practice and the same goes in support of an arrested suspect.
In the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) 1999, he said, legal cover was given to judicial remand of the accused by including section 17 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), but the framers of the Ehtesab Act did not include Section 17 of CrPC and it goes in support of the suspects.
Another senior lawyer, Aminur Rehman Yousafzai, said that another major problem faced by the Ehtesab Commission was the overlapping jurisdiction of other institutions in dealing with cases of corruption, particularly the NAB.
He pointed out that under Section 35 (3) of Ehtesab Commission Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Act 2014, if a federal agency had assumed jurisdiction in a case, then the Ehtesab Commission could not take its cognizance unless a decision was made by head of the NAB, a federal agency, on the recommendation of the Ehtesab Commission’s director general.
He said some accused were released on bail by the high court in the cases in which the NAB had already started inquiry.
The PHC also stopped the Ehtesab Commission from arresting and questioning Prof Dr Ihsan Ali, vice-chancellor, Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan, in appointments and funds use case, and Syed Masoom Shah, personal assistant to former chief minister Ameer Haider Hoti, in his assets’ case as the NAB had already started inquiries against them.
Presently, PTI’s former provincial minister for mines and minerals Ziaullah Afridi is in physical custody of Ehtesab Commission on charges of misuse of authority. The lawyers said that he would also get his interim bail if the flaws were not removed.
Legal experts say the Ehtesab Commission would become more effective if the provincial government reviewed the relevant law and removed the flaws.They say there should be clarity about the respective jurisdictions of the NAB, Ehtesab Commission and Anti-Corruption Establishment dealing with corruption cases.